One Nashville girl's journey to becoming a runner

The doctor says…

He began by having me hop on my left foot again, just as I had done at the free screening. My hip hasn’t been bothering me as much lately, so I was able to do it without much pain (though I could definitely feel it). Then he had me hop on my right to see if it would bother my calf. Again, I could feel it, but it wasn’t painful.

Then he had me stand straight and took note of all my little lower body quirks, like my high arches and my knock-knees.

After that, I laid down so he could run my muscles through some movement tests. He said that I had good range of motion in my hips and legs. He pressed on a few points and told me to let him know if they were tender. There were a few points in my calf that he found, but it wasn’t too bad.

He said that things were looking good and from there I went to have x-rays done. Besides my annual dental x-rays, I’ve never had any done before, so I didn’t know quite what to expect. But it wasn’t bad. I just laid there and moved my legs where the x-ray tech told me to. Four pictures later, we were done.

The doctor went over them with me. He didn’t see anything on my hip x-rays to suggest a stress fracture. There was a tiny blip at the top of my calf, however. He told me that he couldn’t tell if it was of clinical significance or not, but even if it were a stress fracture, it was in the healing stage and it was in a location that didn’t typically break all the way through.

“You can run on Thursday,” he finally proclaimed. He said it was okay to take Tylenol (but not anti-inflammatories). He told me to be careful and walk when I needed to, and then after the 10k, I needed to take about four weeks off and do physical therapy to correct anything that may have caused the injuries before starting up my half marathon training. I’m supposed to go back to see him in six weeks.